


The Life He Loved

by Dream_addicted



Category: Hollywood Undead (Band)
Genre: Friendship, Memories, Past, Past Lives, Post-Reflections, Reflection, Regret, Self-Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2017-11-16
Packaged: 2019-02-03 09:42:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12745788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dream_addicted/pseuds/Dream_addicted
Summary: It was a mess, they were a mess.They were stinking, tired, needy of sleep and a shower, with their parents calling every day or so to be sure that they didn’t die in a ditch or killed by gangsters.They should have left the house a bit more, should have gone to some bars to hook up a girl to fuck or just to spend a night with their friends.They should have worked on their life, got some decent job for once, made up some money in order to survive to the next day.But it was alright like this, it was fucking good.





	The Life He Loved

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AwokenMonster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwokenMonster/gifts).



**2006, April,**

**Los Angeles, California**

 

“I think that we should put a snare in here...yeah, right here”

“You mean after Dylan’s verse?”

“No, no, here...a bit at the left...just two seconds at the left, alright...yeah, there”

George was going crazy with this stuff. To be honest, he had never really been an expert when it came to using computer tools on a song, he was still too accustomed to the old school of simply recording everything and nothing else.

Aron, instead, was even too focused on improving their songs on the computer to notice his awkwardness, so focused that earlier that week he had managed to persuade Jorel that it was a good idea. George didn’t ask what Matty, Dylan, Jordon or Jeff thought about it but they all seemed pretty chill about the thing as well.

After all, who was he to go against the whole band? If everybody thought it was a good thing then he was cool about it as well.

“And now you gotta...ah, damn...gimme it to me, imma do it, don’t worry”

George sighed and got up, leaving the chair for the friend. Aron sat down and started immediately fiddling with all those keyboards, doing something that the other man wasn’t even too sure what was about.

He was excited, though. They already released a single on MySpace and it was going well. Yeah, “Turn Off The Lights” seemed something pretty weird coming from him, especially cause he felt that the song was somehow empty, not deep enough for his tastes. But well, who fucking cared, they were being noticed and that was better than nothing, right?

God, they had so fun registering that thing. He couldn’t believe that Jeffrey Star helped them with that. True, Aron was scared deep in his pants that the man could scare his parents with his weird looks, but at the end Jeffrey showed up with a normal hoodie and a pair of jeans, his fluorescent green hair still pretty freaking even if he tried to appear normal for once.

“Do you think that they will like this one?” George asked the other, pointing at the screen with his chin.  
“Yeah, it’s a pretty sick track. I mean, we can do far better than this, but I still really love it” Aron answered with his nasal voice, a giggle escaping his lips as he kept messing around with the tools.

George nodded. Aron knew what he was doing so he had nothing to worry about. He pressed his fingers up to his eyes, trying to rub away the tiredness and the hours they spent working on Scene For Dummies. He could still see the happiness in Charlie’s eyes when they decided the title of the song, ignoring the dick reference that the friend made just a second later their conversation.

Jordon will always be Jordon.

A smile appeared on his face as he walked towards the sofa not too far away from the desk. From that position, he could see on the ground the metallic stencil they used for their graffiti, a bit simple and rough, but still useful. He remembered the afternoons they spent outside, shooting photos for their MySpace with Jordon’s camera, Aron’s weird masks put on, all cool and edgy. He clearly remembered Dylan asking the skinny man about it, protesting because he wanted a black one, with Jordon stupidly hanging around with a Del Taco’s bag on his head, looking like a real idiot.

George shook his head with a smile, smirking at the memory.

Aron was still too focused on the track to really hear the sigh George made when he plopped down on the couch, his spine finally relaxing after all that time.

Aron. Such a weird guy. With his nasal voice, his slender appearance, so skinny that something George was worried he could break him in two when they were playing fighting ( even if deep inside he knew that the guy was pretty strong for having such a little body ). What he admired more than anything else, though, was his determination. If Aron wanted to do something, he would give heart and mind to that purpose, not stopping until he was finished, until he was on top.

Like right now. They had been in that same room for days, their friends shifting turns to bring them some food and company, Jordon even staying over for a day or two to cheer them up with his idiocy.

George could feel his eyes closing, tiredness taking the best of him. The lights were off, the couch was soft as fuck, he hadn’t been sleeping for something like 28 hours now. He should have gone out a bit to take some fresh air, even for just a cigarette, but right now he couldn’t move a muscle. It was just too comfortable to lay there and listen to Aron tap on the keyboard, the faint sound of their song echoing in the headphones the friend had on, his slender silhouette contrasting with the bright light of the screen.

It was almost dreamy, with the music repeating itself over and over again as Aron worked on it, George slowly shifting into a new position, his muscles relaxing even more.

He wished he could stay like this forever. He could smell the stink of alcohol in his jeans and shirt together with a little scent of smoke, a hole on his knee when he fell on the concrete two days ago on Aron’s porch. He could see the empty beer bottles abandoned on the floor, the cartons of pizza now forming a mountain, cans of Cola laying in a lonely corner and staining the linoleum on the ground. There was also a dog toy that Jordon left some time ago when he was doing the idiot to make them laugh, resting on top of a shelf full of CDs together with the demo of their previous song, “Hollywood”.

It was a mess, they were a mess.

They were stinking, tired, needy of sleep and a shower, with their parents calling every day or so to be sure that they didn’t die in a ditch or killed by gangsters.

They should have left the house a bit more, should have gone to some bars to hook up a girl to fuck or just to spend a night with their friends.

They should have worked on their life, got some decent job for once, made up some money in order to survive to the next day.

But it was alright like this, it was fucking good.

Matty last night had brought them some new clothes while Dylan delivered that same day a couple of hot pizzas, Jordon coming from time to time with something extremely weird he found around the hood or with a brand new joke that would make them laugh for hours. Jay, instead, was the most serious among them. He was actually the one asking about how the song was going, if there were improvements, asking if they needed help, if he should have stayed over that night to give them a hand. Most of the times the rapper slept with them in order to wake up earlier and work better on the tracks, the rapper sleeping on the bed with Aron while George had the couch all for himself, sometimes shifting places so that he could have a piece of bed as well.

It was all right. This was how it was supposed to be and even if it was dirty, disgusting, poor and filthy, George loved it. He loved spending hours working and writing, he loved exchanging ideas with Jordon at three am, loved discussing with Aron all the new things they should have put on a new track. It was his life and even if under certain aspects it sucked, it was still what he loved from the depth of his heart.

He would have never changed anything, he thought. Not a single thing. He didn’t want money, he didn’t want fame, he just wanted people to listen to his words, to listen to what he had to say. He wanted to inspire, to be a source of creativity for other people, to be listened to.

That’s why he called himself “The Server”. He served his fans, his family, his friends, his God.

The man blinked in the darkness, a yawn escaping his lips.

He was falling asleep and he knew it, the image of Aron working on the computer, black figure against the white of the screen, burnt in the back of his eyes.

George loved this life.

**Nine Years Later**

**2015, August,**

**Los Angeles, California**

 

“Are you sure we can throw this away?”

“Yeah man, don’t worry. It’s old anyway. We can’t use it anymore. C’mon, look at it...”  
“But it’s still a good skateb-...alright, alright. Don’t look at me like that, I’m getting rid of it”

“Thanks. Ava is so stubborn. We have to make more space in the garage cause she wants a goddamn dog. You know, ‘cause uncle Jordon has three. That’s why I should never let Charlie babysit her”

“Be happy that she asked for a dog and not for a dickery-dick-a-dick-a-dickery-dock”

“Fuck, man, I don’t even know how to pronounce that, honestly”

Jorel loudly laughed, grabbing the old skate and shoving it in the box for the trash, still giggling when he came back to George in the garage.

It was pretty dark and smelly in there, hundreds of old objects and never used tools that were waiting to be thrown away. The man was still trying to fathom the idea of getting a goddamn dog, knowing for sure that it would mostly mean new problems and expenses.

“What about this ball? Jordon probably forgot this at your place something like...a thousand years ago?”

“Put it in the trash. He has a shitton of new ones”

“Typical of Jordon”

Jorel disappeared again for a second, returning with his hands empty and a smirk on his face.

“I hope he’s not gonna get mad ‘cause we threw away his stuff”

“It’s in my garage so it’s _my_ stuff now”  
“Fair enough”

“Help me with this, Jay. Get that corner and start working with the things there”  
“Roger”

George hated these kind of works. Asia asked him to empty the garage for the new doghouse they would have bought at the market, but he suspected it was only an excuse to throw away all those things she considered just pieces of trash.  
“What about this hat? I remember it was Dylan’s one”

“Trash”

Maybe Asia wasn’t wrong after all.

An old and scruffy hat flight in the air and landed in the trash box, George smirking at that and glancing for a second at a very proud Jorel. He kept rummaging through the old equipment of instruments and tools, with prehistoric computer screens that probably had been produced in the 2000s and a couple of guitar strings occupying a good portion of the floor. The man took most of the things and launched them away, freeing a new portion of the ground and inspecting a new mountain of old objects.

What was there? Well, there was an aged and cracked vinyl CD of the Nirvana, some VHSs of unknown or unnamed movies (surely belonging to Jordon), a dozen of old cassettes reporting the names of a couple of Misfits songs (surely belonging to Jorel, but George didn’t want to start a war and just hid them under the other objects) and even an old copy of some Bukowski book he even forgot he owned.

He was about to say something about how disgusting this place was when his eyes caught it for a second, his whole body freezing as some memories flooded back in his mind.

George couldn’t believe that it had been there for all those years. They thought they had lost it ages ago but apparently it wasn’t the case, and deep inside the man wondered if showing this to Jordon would have made his sad, nostalgic or happy.

“Man? Is it all ok?”

“Cm’here, give it a look”

Jorel walked from his corner of the garage to the opposite side, whistling softly when he noticed the object on the ground.

“Damn, George. I thought I would have never seen it ever again”

The friend nodded, taking from the ground the old metallic stencil, a bit rusted but still recognizable. He passed a hand over it, feeling the holes and the cracks as his fingertips brushed against the cold surface.

The images of far away memories appeared in front of his eyes, a younger and less wise himself doing shit with his friend, walking down Sunset Boulevard with spray cans and stupid masks without knowing what that would have meant in the future.

“I wonder if Aron knows you have it”

George flinched at that comment, his mind stopping daydreaming for a second and returning to the present.

Aron.  
Aron was someone they agreed not to talk of. It was almost a taboo word, except for those few moments in which Jordon was drunk enough to start being nostalgic and melancholic, bringing up the past and telling everybody how much he missed the first years of Hollywood Undead.

George never really liked to talk about Aron. Things had changed, his whole world and life had changed.

He did things he wasn’t proud of, spending a lot of sleepless nights to try to forget as much as possible the things he said in order to save himself and the band, all the insults, the critics, the angry fights.

He shook his head, making a long sigh as he gave the stencil to Jorel, the other rapper taking it with some surprise.

“Do whatever you want with it, I don’t care”

Jorel glanced at him with wide eyes as George moved to a new pile of objects, ignoring the puzzled look of the other. The friend stared down at the metallic surface he was holding and then scratched his head.  
“Can I hang it up above my computer?”

“Sure”

George didn’t want to think about the life he had before. He didn’t want to think about it anymore. That stencil was the closest thing to a living memory he had ever had and he wanted it out of sight.

He wanted it to be gone.  
“Alright, Imma...Imma be back in a second, okay? Gotta tell Vanessa we’re moving that horrible picture away from above my desk”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got work to do in here” George muttered, Jorel opening his mouth to say something but shutting it immediately after, sighing and turning away. The blue masked rapper heard the friend walk down the porch of his house, the beeping of a mobile phone echoing in the air as the rapper called Vanessa.

It was true, so many things had changed.

Jorel had changed. Vanessa had been the one to bring the man inside him out, to make him become a better person, someone ready to have a family, to believe in his own dreams.

George didn’t know about himself, instead. Did he change? Did he man up? The feeling of being a father was still overwhelming, the responsibilities and the worries he had to face day after day to be sure to give Ava a decent future had always crushed him during the night.

And Aron. He didn’t want to think about him, about how bitter the taste of that name sounded on his tongue. He knew that the singer wasn’t a bad person, he knew that what happened was nobody’s fault. It just happened, no reasons behind it, no real justifications to explain how their friendship ended or how the whole hate had arisen.

It was an old story, something he shouldn’t have thought about.

He had shoved that whole thing behind a long time ago, locked it up in some corner of his mind where he wouldn’t have found it, even if sometimes memory would haunt him when he was vulnerable.

It was weird how life went sometimes. In certain moments it was as if everything was already written, fate guiding his actions and allowing him to get a step further towards what he wanted, a bit closer to his goal.  
Some other times, instead, fate seemed to mock him and take away things that could have been different, people that could have influenced his life in their own way, people that could have still been there with him in that instant if it wasn’t for destiny.

Jorel returned few minutes later, stencil under his arm and a new smile plastered on his face.  
“Vanessa said it’s fine. I couldn’t be happier”

George nodded, kneeling on the pavement again as he returned working on the pile of old objects in front of him. He didn’t really want to talk much, he just wanted to focus on something else that weren’t memories or his old life, preferring the future to a hurtful past.

“Do you think Jordon would like to see it? The stencil, I mean” Jorel asked.  
“Maybe yes, maybe not. You never know with Jordon”  
“True, true. Imma try anyway. Alright, Imma go now, can’t wait to hang this old baby in my house”

“Good. Tell Vanessa I said hi”

“I will. And hey, George...”

“What?”

“I know you miss him as much as everyone else...”

George didn’t say anything for few seconds, blue eyes staring at the ground.

He didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to hear those words. He just didn’t.  
“Maybe in another life...”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Maybe I should create a story with many one-shots like big bro Monster?  
> Dunno, not my style.


End file.
